Google: Security of Its Cloud Applications
January 3, 2009
CSO Security and Risk published a mini interview with two Googlers here. “Four Questions on Google App Security” contains little of the lava lamp and Odwalla disingenuousness and some useful information about security for Google Apps’s users. The author bill Brenner is to be commended for ignoring the usual fluff that distracts most of the journalists writing about the GOOG. The Googlers make a passing reference to the problem of multi tenant computing, a topic that warranted some deeper probing in my opinion. The Googlers lay out the Google view of delivering applications from the cloud. Google is not viewing cloud services as Virtualization. Nope. For the GOOG, cloud computing is build around “message application, security, and compliance.” For me the most important comment in the article was:
We have taken a big chunk of Postini’s technology and incorporated it into the Gmail client.
Google has a presence in secure hosted email. If you dig around on the Google Web site, you will find a very reasonably priced email archiving service. The present service is a tiny step away from more robust eDiscovery services. The “hook” between Gmail and Postini is an important signal that Google is beginning the process of rationalization; that is, why have two services. Blend the technology and go with one branded service. I am inclined to reassess Gmail as a more important enterprise service that it now is.
Stephen Arnold, January 2, 2009
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